Their Dogs Came with Them

by Helena María Viramontes

Award-winning author of "Under the Feet of Jesus," Helena Maria Viramontes offers a profoundly gritty portrait of everyday life in L.A. in this lyrically muscular, artfully crafted novel.In the barrio of East Los Angeles, a group of unbreakable young women struggle to find their way through the turbulent urban landscape of the 1960s. Androgynous Turtle is a homeless gang member. Ana devotes herself to a mentally ill brother. Ermila is a teenager poised between childhood and politicalconsciousness. And Tranquilina, the daughter of missionaries, finds hope in faith. In prose that is potent and street tough, Viramontes has choreographed a tragic dance of death and rebirth.Julia Alvarez has called Viramontes "one of the important multicultural voices of American literature." "Their Dogs Came with Them" further proves the depth and talent of this essential author.

Helena Maria Viramontes is the acclaimed author of "The Moths and Other Stories" and "Under the Feet of Jesus," a novel; and the coeditor, with Maria Herrera-Sobek, of two collections: "Chicana (W)Rites: On Word and Film" and "Chicana Creativity and Criticism." She is the recipient of the 2006 Luis Leal Award and the John Dos Passos Award for Literature, and her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized and adopted for classroom use and university study. Viramontes lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is a professor in the Department of English at Cornell University.

Genres: Fiction, Latinx, Queer, School, Novels, Literature, Read For School

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2007

About the author

Helena Maria Viramontes (born February 26, 1954) is an American fiction writer and professor of English.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vickie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting read and well written. I liked how Viramontes was not afraid to go deep into each character and I appreciated how she chose to depict a variety of characters. However, this was not my cup of tea. There was so much figurative language used to depict the lives of people that, even as a Mexican-American born in LA, I could not identify with. I wish more stories were told of Latinos born in LA of parents that pushed education and actively decided to stay away from, essentially all the characters in Viramontes' novel (except for Tranquilina, whom I guess is the person that I most identify with, but even then, barely). Especially at a time when other Americans are quick to say that we are all in gangs, this is the last story I want to read. But again, very well written, she is a skilled raconteur.

[Geoffrey Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very powerful novel, set in East L.A., in the 1960s, and chronicles the lives of a number of women (and to lesser extent men) who live through the freeway expansion that tore through neighborhoods. Their lives are also deeply impacted by gang violence, homelessness, economic insecurity, among other injustices. Viramontes writing is poignant and she's at her strongest when exploring the connections between past and present and giving us a deep sense of who her characters are, where they come from, what their dreams are. I didn't find the larger plot as well crafted as I would have liked. The stories of her main characters end up connecting through a tragic ending, which is powerful, but seemed a little forced. Still, there's some beautiful writing here and sheds light on an important moment of 20th century history that is often overlooked.

[John Pecorelli]

Boyle Heights! No mention of White Fence though. WTF?

[jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

thank god this is finally over. the timeline is nonlinear and sooooo hard to follow. there are dozens of povs which made it even more impossible. i still barely have a clue what happened and too many questions were left unanswered. if i didn’t have to read this for class i probably would’ve dnf’d :/

[Laura Pryor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very frustrating book to read, because the characters were compelling and the story was good, but the writing style made it difficult to get through, and sometimes even obscured events of the story. I like a good simile or metaphor as much as the next reader, but when every last detail is described with them, it gets annoying. And some similes really added nothing to the experience (at one point she wrote that a character who had been caught in a downpour was "as wet as the word 'rain.') I found myself yelling at the author, "Just tell me what happens!"

That said, I liked the way the different story lines intersected, and as the plot moved more quickly, her writing seemed to get more straightforward (or maybe I just got used to it). The characters were very real to me, which made the novel all the more heartbreaking. But I probably won't be reading a lot more of her work (at least not a novel -- her style seems more suitable for short stories).

[Skylar Godwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a huge surprise. It was assigned reading for my Senior Seminar class at University, and I really wasn't feeling it at first.
It isn't told in chronological order, it switched perspectives without warning, and it was very, very descriptive.
BUT then something happened. I stopped being annoyed with the order and started feeling like I was putting together a very interesting puzzle. The more I read, the more the perspectives became obvious and clear. And even though I have never been a fan of over description, the way Viramontes told her story beautifully pulled the reader into the story.
This book deals with gender, class, race, police brutality, war, and so many other issues in one unique package. I think it is a fantastic read and really recommend it if social criticism as literature is your thing.
I ended up enjoying this book much more than I thought I would!

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh this book ... i feel exhausted from the read, my mind worked overtime not to miss anything. the words are beautiful, the description/character development is intensely thorough (but at times almost too much). you must work through this book for fear of missing or not appreciating everything viramontes wants you to see and feel. strong (and developing) chicana women and the landscape they exist in. seperate lives intricately come together. blows my mind with possibilities, it is powerfully written with an ending worth getting to. there is so much to this, at times i felt this could really turn into 2 novels. every word, every story reads like the words were labored over with specific choice. at times, devistating living. at times, inspirational.

[jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is an amazing literary feat and reading it was a labor of love -- a highly rewarding labor of love. i can't imagine the artistic and intellectual rigor required to write a book like this. it has "classic of chicano literature" written all over it. viramontes must feel on top of the world.

the language is like a valentine -- language poetry, dense, stewed, surprising, hypnotic, virtuoso, exacting. here's a passage about an androgynous cholo who finds herself raptured by violence: "And Turtle lunged at the boy with all the dynamite rage of all the fucked-up boys stored in her rented body." jonathan lethem meets leslie marmom silko's Almanac of the Dead in east L.A.

[Vtlozano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Viramontes’s 1960s East L.A. is so tensely written, so thoroughly inhabited that every moment feels as ominous as pre-earthquake stillness. “Dogs” tracks a refracted array of lives—mainly Latinas—as they live in the “Bladerunner” shadow of a rising freeway exchange, about to obliterate everything. Devastating. so dense I could only read it ten pages at a time.

[Nicole Conlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up after it was mentioned in a reading I did for an Urban Planning class. It wasn't my favorite book, but it's definitely a perspective that's notably different from most of the other writers I read, so I'm grateful for that and glad I read it.

[Josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was truly runined by an ENDLESS stream of bad similes, not to mention the over-abundance of adjectives. yuck!

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I have the pleasure of acknowledging a brilliant piece of fiction written by Los Angeles, from and for Los Angeles in Helena Maria Viramontes's Their Dogs Came With Them.

'L.A.' in 2018 is a city of over 10 million people by the last estimate, and in several other ways significantly bigger than what it was during the 1970s when Viramontes was a teenager roaming through its avenues and boulevards to pick up the fulcrum on which her novel rests.

Yet a glance at L.A. then reveals a world not radically different from the one which appears to be on the brink of collapse today, particularly for urban youth in the city: the Vietnam war raged on, while at the same time the 1965 Watts Riots left the city in a state of racial insecurity and opposition to the police state; simultaneously, Black and Brown communities increasingly found heroin and other drugs infiltrating their neighborhoods, while at L.A.’s schools and California’s universities, institutional racism spawned further battle lines for the sunshine state; on the East and South sides of Los Angeles, the bitter memories of the erection of L.A.’s freeways in the early 1960s left people of color there weary of the city and its development; and only a few feet away, youth ‘delinquency’ and incarceration marked the outset of a prison industrial complex, which our communities are still dealing with today, nearly fifty years later.

These are the living nightmares of what was then still a newly modernizing world which inspired the heroine that is the amazing Viramontes, whose literary gifts unwind similarly to a nightmare, or as genuine superpowers around the mind of the reader for immersing us like veins into the bodies of suffering deviating from their wake. In Their Dogs Came With Them, the micro-histories that make up Los Angeles are given life on the literary big screen, where they shine like a golden Pontiac, roaring with desire and pulling all in their midst to the edge of what might be possible with just enough forgetting, even if total forgetting is never quite possible.

In the opening chapters of the book, we meet Ermila, along with her Grandmother, the latter of whom is haunted by memories of a life in fear:

“A bespectacled Grandmother didn’t see the child lift the box to show off her award. The sunlight scarred her vision, and Grandmother couldn’t quite discern the child holding on to Miss Eastman except for the white teeth of the teacher talking to the child as they walked the dark corridor to meet her. Grandmother had watched the escalating heat rising each and every day, the glass thermometer bursting, its red mercury spreading infectious green-tinted rage. Miss Eastman grew larger and darker, and the child swung her pink gift in the shaded hollowness of the corridor. No longer immunized, Grandmother knew it was only a matter of time before the roaming packs of Negroes would claw out of the television’s own green guts, riot-rushing to lift and overturn cars and set fire to all the neighborhood had worked for, to anything flammable on the living side of First Street. Though the teacher passed the child over to Grandmother tenderly, Miss Eastman appeared so black, she was green.”

Grandmother, who is the only caretaker in her granddaughter's life, also speaks to the apprehension--or Americanization--of the time, which, much like today, was dominated by the mystical spell of late night news, albeit through the color or green televisions that were just making their way into so many living rooms. And while we never learn much about Grandmother's own childhood, she's a woman many readers will recognize right away, as are each of the novel's figures in its surreal sequence of events.

Memory 'lapses' form major parts of each character's time with us, making for a surreal timeline that moves through Their Dogs, but a few themes stand out most consistently for this reader: Viramontes’s work is deeply concerned with upbringing and the burdens placed on youth coming of age in a world that at many turns appears to be dis-invested in their humanization, and which at others appears to be teeming with life so palpable it can't simply be passed over as anything but extraordinary. Ermila, who is probably the novel's second most rebellious figure, carries this most naturally:

"She collected observations as one would collect ice-cream sticks: a youth riding a wobbly bike on the muddy shoulders of the street; a skinny cat roaming through the tall bird-of-paradise stalks; two comadres chatting between a fence; an old crooked bird man who fed his flock of pigeons daily. The desire to be on the other side of the fence, to run away and join them, was so strong, it startled her."

There is also, no matter how much a reader might hope for the novel to do otherwise, a refusal to let go of the traumas which turn youth from hand-held creatures brimming with the future in their eyes into unintelligible monsters weighed down by their pasts, depending on which side we meet their glances from. A heartbreaking memory from arguably the novel's most compelling figure, "Turtle," demonstrates this clearly:

"Tio Angel lunged at his brother Frank, and after the bump and break of furniture, the fall and jingle of Christmas tree, the grind and gravel of glass shards, Turtle heard the screen door screech open. Turtle dug her fingertips underneath some shingles, terrified of falling, and she peered over the roof's edge and saw how awkwardly the scuffling shadows flew into the nopales."

Each page through the novel is filled with piercing uses of language such as this, at times nearly unbearable to digest. But just when violence threatens to steal the show, Viramontes follows with paragraphs that are simply mystical and delicious concoctions of sounds for readers to sift through, reminiscent of the late great Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, though with a voice distinguished by the duality of a young woman both trapped and liberated by femininity and age. When Ermila and her girlfriends mightily get back at an ex of hers after their recent breakup, for example, they smuggle their teenage glee for the more adult-like professionalism over the affair, driving the sequence through with a galvanizing energy to dwell in:

“And just as they had converged, they pulled away in opposite directions slowly, sluggishly lest they call attention to themselves, not rushing to leave the scene of the crime, though it was a difficult task not to explode adrenaline all over the place. They had to silence the forcefulness of their delight, hesitating to acknowledge one another’s glances. They strolled away in separate directions, carrying the flakes of metallic paint, bluish palms, the color of yams on their hands, barely containing their collective sense of invincibility. Whatever laughter or disbelief, whatever overblown nerves Ermila had suppressed, now raised her spirit to the point that her steps felt buoyant and she felt an enormous craving for adventure.”

These are the lines which make the novel not just a reflection on childhood, but a dream through the thin space between the actuality and imagination which comprise it, like the gravity that separates us from the stars only physically, but not in our fantasies. And they are the micro-histories and maybe even sub-atomic histories that Viramontes unravels with such mastery for a novel so gorgeous it contains something for everyone no matter which side of history they may stand on. What is the best literature, after all, if not an expression for the whole world and all of humanity to observe together, opposite of one another, and more. In Ben, whose character haunts the novel's trajectory more than engaging with it directly, any reader who's ever felt a tinge of uncertainty at simply "going with the flow" will relate:

“Thank you, he said. Being late for class, Ben said he’d better get going because seats became scarce in his Intro Soc class. But the young woman shouted to his back, A gift for you, hermano. And then ran up to him, removed her beret and placed it on his head. And at that instance when he looked directly into her eyes, Ben would’ve given his life to walk upright without hobbling, to push his chest out, to brave the mental eye of the tornado and be absorbed by something larger. The woman cocked her head to read his stunned expression, and he turned to mask it. His leg plagued him like his fear. He resisted being lifted up into a gathering mass of swirling political storms. He refused to be clearly defined as Chicano, and for that, he refused to belong to a fluid movement, joining her, joining them, joining other Chicanos to become a part, to become a whole and not just stay forever in between.”

I am unmistakably shaken by Viramontes's astounding historical prose and document, which ultimately erupts into a brilliant crescendo or joyride through Los Angeles with her characters no matter how dark the space. Even before the immaculate finale, however, each moment in the novel is a memory mixed with a wish, an ode to friends and members of her community across the ages; our people thus become one and the same; and our struggle to look beyond Los Angeles's smog and out towards the night sky in hopes of better days, a ritual encompassing every last one of us.

Their Dogs Came With Them is an achievement for literary aficionados, artists, scholars, and witnesses of all kinds everywhere. And from this day forward, the book is not just with JIMBO TIMES, but it's embedded into our reading's subatomic consciousness. With each new young reader we get to meet, then, we'll be sending this book their way. Nuestro Pueblo will know Viramontes's name.

J.T.

[Old Man JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking place in East Los Angeles in the 1960's the book follows the lives of an assortment of Latinos as they navigate their way through the tough streets. Although, most of the characters featured were woman, I think, my favorite was a humorous story of grandfather who wished he had a color tv. The separate stories of the various character all tended to converge toward the end of the book to give some cohesion. It was a very well written but a little confusing book at times. Viramontes wrote in a lyrical prose but it, sometimes, didn't seem to really say anything. For this reason it's difficult to give a rating so I'm staying neutral with a 3 rating.

[Lyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everything was alive. I’ll come back to this to study the writing.

[Logan Tunick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a profound eye-opener for me. Assigned in my Senior Seminar course at college, I initially approached it with skepticism. The narrative structure is non-linear, with sudden shifts in perspective and vivid descriptions that can be overwhelming at first.

However, as I delved deeper, I discovered that the unconventional format was more like an intricate puzzle waiting to be pieced together. The more I read, the clearer the various viewpoints became, and I found myself drawn into the story. Viramontes’ beautiful prose, while richly descriptive, captivated me and brought the narrative to life.

One of the most impactful aspects of the book was its exploration of freeway construction and the "progress" it claims to bring. I learned so much about the devastating consequences of these projects, which often go overlooked. The issues surrounding gender, class, race, police brutality, and war are all woven together in a powerful narrative that is both educational and crucial to understanding our society. (4.5) I enjoyed it much more than i expected

[Norma · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of the novel comes from a story about the Mexican conquest, where the dogs of the conquerors came along beside them, “saliva dripping from their jaws”. A comparison to this situations is made in the book with the invading freeways system, which cut off most of East L.A. from the city, thus separating the culture symbolically as well as physically. Many houses of Mexican-Americans were destroyed in order to make room for this process; who is it that suffers in the name of modernizing and convenience? The book makes us wonder: at what cost is civilization? Who pays the price that I might be “civilized” and have all the benefits of modernity? Ermilia, for example, has “six freeways in [her:] front yard,” though “she rarely had use for the delineated corridors.”

The book deals with “authority” in other ways also, such as the rabies curfews. Police imposed curfews in an attempt to control the outbreak of rabies, but of course the result was the submission of Chicano neighborhoods to surveillance, violence, and destruction. An increased police presence effects the lives of all citizens. Helicopters hover about, sweeping the neighborhood, looking for dogs but of course, anything moving about is considered a target. This concern with justice, in the form of civil rights, feminism, opposition to the Vietnam War, destruction of racist boundaries, soaks into the whole book. Luis, for example, exemplifies a masculine concern with violence; the text notes that “having balls was what Luis was all about” (228). This is of course in contrast to Turtle, who is “sin huevos”. This creation of identity, specifically of the female in contrast to the male, the Chicano in contrast the dominate Anglo, and all subverted identities in their quest to take up a little space in the world, is at the heart of this terrific novels concern.

[Kim Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading lists for books about L.A. tend to be fairly consistent: Chandler, Didion, Fante, etc. etc. But on a more adventuresome list, I found this novel. It's difficult reading much of the time. It has moments of unforgettably vicious beauty. And it's essential because it opens up a part of the city that rarely gets attention in the book world: East Los Angeles. Viramontes follows a small group of loosely connected Mexican American characters during the 1960s. One of the biggest issues the book tackles is the building of the freeways through East L.A. These freeways divided neighbors who had lived side by side for decades. It displaced families. It was an incontrovertible show of disrespect towards an entire community. A further sense of displacement is explored with a neighborhood quarantine, using roadblocks to supposedly protect people from rapid dogs. This novel also explores Chicano gangs and the relationships between the young men and women who were a part of them. But in the end Viramontes does not write about ISSUES. She writes about the people living their lives in, around and in spite of the issues that were beyond their control, aggressively affecting the way they lived out their days.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is beautifully written but lacks momentum. Each of the characters are connected somehow but they don't know it. By Part III I was waiting for something to happen, and it didn't congeal until the final 15 pages, when some of the characters converge in a tragedy. There are parts of this story that remain unresolved, which is unsatisfying, such as Tranquelina's attack. What was that about and why include it but not address it? The overall feeling of struggle without changing anything, the day to day struggle of common people is palatable and moving though and overall I liked this book.

[Maythee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great novel. This work is many things: a history of Mexican Angelenos; a fresh observation about adolescent sexualities; a successful exercise in multi-voiced narratives; a call for all the lost mothers and a record of their absences; an urban study; an illustration of the making of a police state; a confessional space for pain and anger; a spiritual journey; and, perhaps, also a suggestion for how to understand.

Clearly, I loved it. What I'm likely to say about it every time is that Turtle is bound to become a classic beloved character.

[Gladys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminded me a lot of Jessica Hagedorn's book Dogeaters which I strangely enjoyed.I love novels that are composed of different memories and stories, eventually all between intertwined. Heightens the sense of a collective memory within a community.

[Sophia Rivera · Rating 5 out of 5]

an amazing remembering and re-telling of a narrative dominant American history so conveniently forgets. Their Dogs Came with Them took be back to 1959-1970, Chavez Ravine, took to me to the historical moment and haunting a of a brutal displacement of a community of Mexicans and Mexican Americans; Helena Maria Viramontes is brilliant!

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, good story, good intersection of various story lines. Writing awkward and self-conscious in places.

Probably the most realistic depiction of poor inner-city gang culture (East LA) that I've read. Viramontes makes you care about and understand these characters.

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Omg beautiful painful rich book, powerful writing. Wish I would have an opportunity to teach it, but it'd be best in upper level specialty courses. Precious stories of devalued people, their homes and their survival strategies.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful novel about the violent division of neighborhoods and communities in east LA as a result of the building of freeways.

[Joey Gamble · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent.

[Margarita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it. The writing is well written.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book but I will definitely have to read it again. So beautifully written, I just may have to read it with a clear head.

[Emily Lintner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most viscerally painful novels I have ever read. But it is a story that must be told, and Viramontes tells it beautifully.

[nuit · Rating 2 out of 5]

like in theory, fine but in practice it was super clouded with similes and metaphors that didnt really add anything. the ideas are good but like I barely understood what was happening at any given time. every single little detail was given more attention than it should have and thusly obscured the plot. parts of the plot were kinda glossed over in favor of describing the minor details of what was happening while the plot was happening, so I had to reread parts in order to try to understand what was going on.

what little plot there was anyway.

I cant speak to the accuracy of a chicanx experience, but I read this for a class so I guess it's pretty accurate.

also I understand that theres beauty in the style but like I think it hindered the effect of the actual content

spoilers

I didnt like how I didnt know why were we following any of these characters till literally the last part. like i get what it was trying to do but it was pretty much like trying to get through a bad day so you can get home to something you were looking forward only to be denied the full pleasure of the thing you were waiting for. so pretty unsatisfying for me.

[Lali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fictional snapshot of Chicano East LA in the 60's and 70's is detailed, gritty, and as another reviewer put it, "viciously beautiful". The writing style does not follow a traditional narrative flow- rather each chapter feels more like following the train of thought of the character in focus. Those thoughts move between the details of their surroundings, observing their current feeling, and drifting back and forth in time between past trauma and revelations. The fictional events surrounding the Quarantine Authority carry a relevant symbolism in regards to the over-policing of marginalized communities.